cloudy due to Phosfloc. It started wit an acid lock problem a couple of months ago. Clear, clean but tasted funny. several trips to the pools store, every week is something different. It turned purple. I was able to take a wipe sample. It's a gradual process It's not purple any longer but 2 weeks ago we were told we still need to lower alkalinity and raise PH. We were told to dump 6 lbs of phosfloc. let it sit overnight and vacumn. We have cartridge filter and now we're being told that we shouldn't have used phosfloc with our type of filtering system. We're vacumning every day and can't seem to get rid of the cloudiness. We fill the pool until its about to overflow and vacumn out the water as low as we can. fill again let it settle and try again. It doesn't seem to be clearing. We cant see the bottom to know if we're vacumning anything. Same pool store all along, different techs. As of 2 days ago, Alkalinity is still a tad high, calcium is high also. Everything else is normal except for the cloudiness.
what can we do to get clear water?

Is the pool clear after you let it sit? I would turn it off for a few days and hopefully it will settle, if not I would maybe add a Floc and retry it, but not Phos Floc.you are vaccuming to waste right?

we were vacumning every day until 3 days ago, we were also running the filtering and auto vac as usual. We shut it down and let it sit for 2 1/2 days and it is still as cloudy as it was when this started. Yes we are vacumning to waste. Whats the difference between a floc and phosfloc?

I am not certain what the difference is to be honest, but I have never had an issue with plain old floc, you put it in, run the pump for 4 hours then shut it off for 24 hours, set the vac up, start the pump on waste/drain and vac the pool. if you start the pump on filter it will stir up the silt again.hope that helps

Phosfloc is only used to remove phosphates. It is generally unreliable and many homeowners have a hard time using it as it doesnt settle as "heavily" as floc does (most of it flies up into the water even when vacuuming slowly.)

The reason you were told not to use phosfloc (or any floc) with your cartridge filter is that cartridge filters do not have a "waste" setting on them. Many pool owners do have a seperate valve for pumping water out of the pool (so its essentially the same thing.) If you do have a waste valve its still important to take out the cartridge filter as floc plugs it up.

If it still hasnt cleared, Ide recommend "flocing" it with regular floc, with the cartridge out of course and vacuuming the bottom to waste when you are done.

Because of problems such as this, Natural Chemistry now sells a Commecial Strength Phosphate Remover.

If his pool is like mine (I also have a cartridge filter), he may not even have a vacuum-to-waste option.

I presume that the reason that a phosphate remover was used in the first place was due to getting algae growth or an unusual chlorine demand. "acid lock" probably refers to a high Cyanuric Acid (CYA) level which some people say causes "chlorine lock" though technically that is not true. What happens is that it makes chlorine less effective unless you proportionately raise the Free Chlorine (FC) level to roughly keep the FC/CYA ratio constant.

The CYA probably rose over time from continued use of stabilized chlorine, probably Trichlor pucks/tabs. With a cartridge filter, one doesn't backwash so there is probably very little dilution of pool water. The CYA can build up quickly since the following are chemical rules:

For every 10 ppm Free Chlorine (FC) added by Trichlor, it also increases Cyanuric Acid (CYA) by 6 ppm.For every 10 ppm FC added by Dichlor, it also increases CYA by 9 ppm.For every 10 ppm FC added by Cal-Hypo, it also increases Calcium Hardness (CH) by 7 ppm.

So without a lot of dilution, even a low 1 ppm FC per day chlorine usage results in an increase in CYA of 18 ppm per month or over 100 ppm after only 6 months.

You can learn much more about maintaining a pool by reading the Pool School at Trouble Free Pool.